


shine

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Banter, Canto Bight, Flirting, M/M, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-07 06:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13428462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: He never pursued the beings he could categorize easily upon first glance. He never pursued tedious marks and obvious allies, the desperate investor nor the intrigued paramour. He was so rarely surprised; he intended to court it thoroughly when he came across it. Discovery was part of the romance of it all, the thrill.





	shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



When Canto Bight wasn’t too busy gorging itself on crime and vice and greed, it dined on novelty and fun and even sometimes beauty. The city took it all and gave little in return that wasn’t false gold. For all but the best and luckiest among them, Canto Bight was a raucous, glittering hellscape; as easily as it got its claws into people, people’s claws got caught in it in return. Mutual, gorgeous parasites were the citizens and tourists of Canto Bight. They ensured the survival of one another. They loved one another, if any of them knew how to love anything at all.

And Master Codebreaker saw through the whole lot of them, had seen through them almost since he first arrived, too young and naïve to keep the authorities from catching onto his tricks at the slots and banning him from them in perpetuity. He’d learned quickly enough though and, even if all these years later the Canto Casino’s hired thugs still looked at him a little meanly if he got too close to the various machines he could still sweet talk in his sleep, he’d learned his lessons well. So he kept to the gaming tables, where his skills couldn’t be put to use so easily, and he watched for marks and allies, business partners and lovers alike. Enemies, too, sometimes. For variety. For interest.

He didn’t always know in advance who would be which. That was part of the fun.

For all he knew, this man could be all or none of those things. Not a single one stood out as the front-runner, though Master Codebreaker knew his preferences and knew them well.

He never pursued the beings he could categorize easily upon first glance. He never pursued tedious marks and obvious allies, the desperate investor nor the intrigued paramour. He was so rarely surprised; he intended to court it thoroughly when he came across it. Discovery was part of the romance of it all, the thrill. 

And romance, he thought, might just be on the menu tonight.

For all that tourists were the driving force of industry in Canto Bight, the tourists were often the same ones, visiting at the same time of year, year after year. He knew so many of the beings who came here that it always came as a bit of a shock when someone new came along. Fresh meat drew the eye of most people here. If they were saps or fools—and they often were—they could have profits wrung from them by the pros and long-timers. The tricks only worked when you didn’t know they were coming, after all, and everyone in Canto Bight salivated at the thought of divesting new arrivals of their innocence.

Not Master Codebreaker, of course. He was above such petty things and had far better things to do besides. Like pretend it was the metal-plated dice in his hands that he cared about rather than the challenge that had just stepped onto the casino floor. A vision in black and silver, understated for the casino, but elegant, too, he swept between the various throngs of revelers with hardly a glance at anyone, hardly an emotion on display. It might just have been Elathe, the galaxy-famous tailor’s, work itself he wore. Or if not that, a very near facsimile, good enough to leave even Master Codebreaker unsure. His dark eyes searched the room, hungry for the kind of action only Canto Bight could offer, but restrained, too, as though he knew himself and his appetites well and had the confidence of long-mastery.

Master Codebreaker dithered over where he imagined the new arrival would go, made a bet with himself and then discarded it. At first, he assumed the slots, same as anyone would, but then…

Then he thought about it truly.

This was an adventurer, a scoundrel, if one heeled in particularly expensive, tasteful shoes. He would never play the slots when he could play his fellow beings instead. He’d hit the card tables instead. Sabacc probably—you had to keep it interesting, after all—or Horansi. That had grown popular since the Rebellion defeated the Empire and everyone learned everything there was to learn about the dashing heroes the New Republic spit back out at the galaxy, what they ate, who they personally fought for, what they did in their down time, which apparently consisted of moments of sheer terror punctuated by vicious games of, you guessed it, Horansi.

He wasn’t displeased for once when the man veered in the direction he suspected and then directly to the table he would have guessed for him. Populated by overzealous youngsters with more credits than sense, the table was surrounded by the easiest bunch to fleece. Hell, they probably welcomed it. Nobody who completed their first trip to Canto Bight wanted to leave without a tale of woe to spice up the glitter and glamour and perfection the rest of their vacation would take. A little darkness was expected and welcomed.

They would probably think this dashing newcomer was an old hand, the little lambs, a famous face in the galaxy’s most famous place.

At least they’d have an interesting story to tell, though not for the reasons they would think it was so.

The dice no longer interested him regardless. No, not now. He could very well give these kids another show, and a very rare one at that. Master Codebreaker never ventured far from the craps table, not for anything, not since he’d first been disallowed from the slots for tinkering and slicing and cheating his way into fortune after fortune until finally someone caught on—and far too soon.

He still wasn’t entirely sure who, someone equally good at slicing presumably and no compunction with selling out a fellow traveler, but Master Codebreaker still hadn’t managed to track down how and who and when exactly.

Anyway.

Eyes followed him as he dismissed himself, setting his favorite pair of dice—a loaded, lucky charm he picked up from the first Lovey he came across, a man of exquisite taste who wanted Master Codebreaker’s job as much as every Lovey since had wanted his job—on the corner of the table, a prize for whomever was the quickest and most shameless. The prize of Master Codebreaker’s dice? Anyone would want _that_ souvenir to take home with them. There were a number of contenders around, but Master Codebreaker wasn’t interested in making this particular bet with himself, not when there were more interesting shores to skim about in.

He finally caught the man’s attention within about ten meters of the sabacc table and, happily enough, he caught the man’s attention first, before the others turned and gawped. His smile dazzled even by Cantonican standards and that would have been worth the price of all the uncouth attention Master Codebreaker drew by making his way here in the first place. He would have debased himself further for another glimpse of that smile, but the man was generous, far more generous than anyone in Canto Bight generally was, and only grinned the brighter as Master Codebreaker stepped up to him. He treated smiles like they cost nothing, like they were an infinite resource.

Remarkable. Truly remarkable.

The dealer smoothly slid the required cards his way. The smile she gave to him was nothing in comparison to the one this man offered, but Master Codebreaker was known for his cordiality and returned it. He knew how to play the game. Both games. The card game in front of him and the grand game of Canto Bight itself. “Thank you, my dear,” he said, pleasantly light, deceptively so.

The man, just as Master Codebreaker might have hoped, leaned into his space, his elbow balanced against the generous lip of the table.

“You’ll ruin the line of your suit,” he pointed out, gesturing at the man’s crooked arm.

“It might be worth it,” he replied, smooth, but he straightened and adopted the perfect posture to go along with the perfect tailoring he wore. “But for you… Lando Calrissian, and who might it be I’m speaking with?”

“Me?” He pointed demurely at himself. It was nice to think that this Lando Calrissian didn’t know who he was already, a polite fiction that almost no one bothered with any longer. It was quaint. It was novel. It was everything Master Codebreaker hadn’t thought he could want on a mundane night in the casino on Canto Bight. “I’m the Master Codebreaker around here, darling.”

Lando accepted this for the non-answer it was, because he was a gentleman and had clearly done his homework. Master Codebreaker might have worried that this was one of his rivals—that taunt he’d thrown up onto the Holonet was so very appealing, wasn’t it? His identity and his name all wrapped up in one cryptographically sound package—but up-close Lando didn’t seem the type. He hadn’t seemed the type from far away either, but one could never be sure, not until one got that sharp, tight focus. The dealer offered Lando his parcel of cards. He didn’t even bother to look at them. “I don’t have to ask how you are at slicing given the fancy title, but how are you at cards?”

“Magnificent.”

Lando’s eyes crinkled and the warmth in them redoubled. “Would you care to make this interesting in that case?”

Master Codebreaker sniffed and his gaze roved around the room. “This is Canto Bight. We all of us live for interesting.” He didn’t add that for him personally, Canto Bight’s idea of interesting was anything but. Shady criminality and the broad viciousness of people who had the money to demand every experience they could ever want didn’t move him. The curl of possibility at the corner of Lando’s mouth? That did. “What did you have in mind?”

All pleasant things, that curl chose to say now, every pleasant thing.

He didn’t need to hear Lando’s answer to agree to it.

The holoprojector in the middle of the table blinked to life, washing the assembled players in shades of blue and red and green, a contrast to the glittering silver and gold and black and white and gray that splashed across the rest of the casino. Though it was in-fashion now, it would soon turn to something else. Shades of puce perhaps or chartreuse will reign for a season and be forgotten. Then herringbone or checked patterns or technicolor swirls will become the hero of the hour. One day, it will cycle back to the clean shades that reigned tonight and Master Codebreaker will think back on this time with fondness and he will think of Lando with equal fondness, the two now one and the same.

But for now he lived in the moment and enjoyed every stray brush of Lando’s fingers against his as he traded cards or placed bets or merely touched Master Codebreaker for no other reason than because he wanted to.

With every hand, Master Codebreaker learned more about Lando and the more he learned, the more he liked what he saw. As far as Master Codebreaker could tell, he never actually took chances. Every bet he called or raised compared to every flip of his card made logical sense. Not at all what Master Codebreaker expected from him, but intriguing nonetheless.

“What are you looking for here?” he asked between hands, his lips intimately close to the perfectly formed shell of Lando’s ear.

Lando’s smile did not change; it disclosed everything and nothing. “A good time with good company. What else does anyone wish for in the greatest city of light and glamour there is?” His cufflink flashed as he twisted his wrist and tugged at his cuff as though it, too, wished to make his point. “I’ve come into a bit of a windfall is all. I wanted to take advantage of that before Lady Luck abandoned me once more.”

Master Codebreaker’s mouth twitched. “Uh huh,” he said, only teasing a little. He knew exactly what that kind of visitor looked like. And Lando didn’t fit the bill. “I have a hard time believing you have anything but a healthy relationship with the mistress of good fortune.”

Lando’s laugh was pleasant and warm. “Healthy doesn’t always mean good, my friend. You must be exceptionally lucky if you believe otherwise.”

“I like to think it’s my ability to plan ahead that’s held me in good stead all these years.” His eyebrows lifted. “I do so like to scheme in advance. Luck isn’t always necessary if you’ve planned appropriately.”

Lando looked him up and down, disbelief in the wideness of his eyes and the half-open turn of his lips. “You truly have been blessed in this life.”

Master Codebreaker didn’t break out this particular smile for just anyone, saving it only for the best and most special of occasions. It was the one that some would consider shy and others forward. It was understated and exaggerated. It was everything and nothing all at once. “Perhaps I’ll rub off on you.”

Winking, Lando turned his attention to the card table and the handful of cards the dealer flicked his way. Lifting them, he devoted the majority of his attention to what he saw there, but his gaze flicked once back to Master Codebreaker’s face, like he was considering… something. “That would make me very lucky indeed.”

“No,” Master Codebreaker answered, “I’m just prepared.”

He’d known—even before he’d known—that this was where he wanted them to end up. Beneath the bright lights of Canto Bight, he wanted to show a stranger a good time, a pleasant evening, and an extraordinary night. He wanted to kiss the air out of a luminously beautiful man who, now that Master Codebreaker looked, had gray beginning to streak his temples, distinguished and as sure a sign of experience as Master Codebreaker needed in order to know he’d have an extraordinary time in return.

“What do you say?”

The holoprojector flickered and shifted. A new card shone and three of the people around them groaned in frustration. Not Lando though. No.

Lando laid his cards all on the table.

A perfect Idiot’s Array.

“I say, ‘Yes,’” Lando answered, taking Master Codebreaker’s hand in his and leading him away from the fat pot he’d just won for himself. Their half-circle of rubes masquerading as tourists watched on with open mouths. If Lando didn’t claim his prize, it would go right back into the pot. All those credits lost despite his win and he didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

Master Codebreaker had somehow expected nothing less from him.

But he would prove Lando’s time spent in Canto Bight was well worth it anyway.


End file.
